I'm not seeing this behavior on my own copies of the Windows CLI tools. I get an error if I use a backslash instead of a forward slash, but otherwise opens just fine in old versions. C:\Data\Programs\SQLite\db>attrib A R C:\Data\Programs\SQLite\db\test2.db C:\Data\Programs\SQLite\db>cd.. C:\Data\Programs\SQLite>.\3.33.0\sqlite-tools-win32-x86-3330000\sqlite3.exe SQLite version 3.33.0 2020-08-14 13:23:32 Enter ".help" for usage hints. Connected to a transient in-memory database. Use ".open FILENAME" to reopen on a persistent database. sqlite> .open .\db\test2.db Error: unable to open database ".db est2.db": unable to open database file sqlite> .open ./db/test2.db sqlite> .tables foo sqlite> .databases main: C:\Data\Programs\SQLite\db\test2.db sqlite> .exit C:\Data\Programs\SQLite>.\3.34.0\sqlite-tools-win32-x86-3340000\sqlite3.exe SQLite version 3.34.0 2020-12-01 16:14:00 Enter ".help" for usage hints. Connected to a transient in-memory database. Use ".open FILENAME" to reopen on a persistent database. sqlite> .open ./db/test2.db sqlite> .databases main: C:\Data\Programs\SQLite\db\test2.db r/o sqlite>